Novel: War on the Inland Sea

It never occurred to me that at fifty-seven years old, I would become an author. It always seemed so far outside of the realm of possibility that it was laughable. Yet here we are …

I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing for my own pleasure: historical fiction has always been the genre I enjoyed and I would write short stories occasionally that I would never allow anyone to read. I began writing this book years ago, starting and stopping innumerable times over a period of four or more years. I’ve lost count now to be honest. I was fascinated by the history of the British fleet on Lake Ontario and began collecting anecdotes and information about this effort during the French and Indian War. It reminded me a great deal of my time in Afghanistan, a footnote to a larger war on the edge of civilization.

An idea became a plan and I even wrote an outline for the novel, though I didn’t dare call it that then. But still nothing; it remained a plan, poorly executed and unfinished. Then my wife asked me that if I liked writing, why didn’t I write every day? Five hundred words a day was the challenge, that’s all, just five hundred words. And she was right, I really did enjoy writing every morning and now I’m an author.

War on the Inland Sea follows a few fictional characters, but mostly real people, to tell the story of the British attempt to take control of the French fur trade on the Great Lakes. Much as the French and Indian War was a small part of the broader Seven Years War, the effort on Lake Ontario was a sideline to the conflict in North America. In 1755, two British regiments, some provincial militia and a few Royal Navy officers were at the mouth of the Onondaga River on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, building forts and ships. Called Oswego by the British, and Chouaguen by the French and their Indian allies, the location was strategically placed to threaten the French fur trade. All the French trade from their western outposts went first to the forts at Toronto or Niagara, then across the lake to Fort Frontenac at present day Kingston, Ontario. From there it went to the merchants at Montreal and Quebec for shipment overseas. But the critical node, the single point of failure, was the trade routes on Lake Ontario.

My own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan informed my writing in this novel: a war in some forgotten place that few people knew or cared about. I wanted the protagonist and antagonist to be flawed men, rather than good or evil. That seems to me truer to life to me and consistent with a quote I read from the survivor of the Soviet Gulag:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart …”

I believe that. I believe that war and conflict define that truth, that every human being is capable of evil, of all the hateful things one person can do to another. And by extension, that every human being is capable of good; loyalty, friendship, love, …etc. I saw both in Iraq, but more so in Afghanistan. I also saw the ineptitude of military commanders engaged in hubris and indecision. I’ve tried to speak to all of it to the extent that I can, that my limited skill will allow.

Whether I succeeded in portraying it in my narrative is debatable, but I wanted to show that truth from the three historic viewpoints of the conflict on Lake Ontario. The British we’ve discussed, but the French perspective I think was displayed best by the Marquis de Bougainville, who was the young aide of General Montcalm. Bougainville was a Captain in the French Army at this time and left a memoir of his time fighting in the wilderness. I chose him as someone to focus on because later in life he would change services and become an Admiral and explorer of some distinction. His real relationship with both Nicholas and Baptiste du Clos Guyot informed other parts of the story.

I decided to focus on the native American perspective as well when I was reading transcripts of Sir William Johnson’s gatherings of the Iroquois at his home in the Mohawk Valley. In one such event, a representative of the Mississauga of Toronto met with Johnson to discuss the potential war with the French and greater trade opportunities with the British. Called “Nockie” in the transcript, my research suggested that the name might have been Nooke, which is the name of one of the Mississauga clans. I found the thought of an ambassador from such a distant people reaching out to the British fascinating. I also included Tequakareigh in my story, the principal chief of the Mississauga of Toronto at the time. The Johnson Papers show that he would eventually negotiate with Sir William Johnson when the latter captured Fort Niagara in 1759. I tried to learn as much as I could about this tribe, to give them the voice they deserved in the narrative. Again, hopefully I succeeded.

REF:

Bougainville, L.A. and Hamilton, E. Tr. “Adventure In The Wilderness The American Journals Of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, 1756-1760.” University of Oklahoma Press (1964).

O’Callaghan, E. Ed. (1835-87). Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, Albany, Weed, Parsons and Company, Printers.

Schmalz, P. S. (1991). The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario. United Kingdom: University of Toronto Press.

Solzhenitsyn, A. (2002). The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956. Harper Collins (2002).